His mother worked in service for the Borden family in Green Point, while his father drove a horse & cart for Shocks bottle store in Wynberg. Mr Thomas recalls: 
“We saw my mother once a week – she would come home on a Friday evening and left on a Sunday afternoon. When she came home with a train on Fridays, she would stand on Claremont Station, waiting until it was dark. Do you 
know why? Because when she walked the street – it was Granny Swaine and next door, the Rushens – and she would hear, ‘My dear! Your boys did this, your boys did that!’, and she got so tired of hearing how naughty we were every week. Once Granny Swaine – a nice, stout lady – said to my mother one day as she came home (they always used to tell her not to give us a hiding): ‘Your boys threw stones on my roof.  And when I spoke to them they did this!’ and she hitched up the back of her dress and showed her behind to my mother! My brother and I were hiding in the garden watching all of this. After that my mother always waited at the station until it was dark before she walked home.”

At the age of 11, a notice was sent out to the local schools that Dr Morris, who owned a vineyard in Constantia, was looking for children to work as labourers on his farm. Isaac and his brother signed up, and he remembers that, even though slavery had been long-since abolished, they were whipped daily by Master Tony who would walk down the row administering beatings if he discovered any bruised grapes in the harvest. 

“You know, It amused me more than anything else – the emotional pain stayed far longer than the physical – and he would come down and shout at us and beat us. Boys and girls, he beat everybody!” 

Mr Thomas was whipped by Master Tony until he was finally qualified as a teacher in 1943 and could pursue a new career in education. 

One of Isaac’s passions is hiking, and there were few obstacles to mountain climbing and hiking in his early youth. 
“We used to go climbing up at Kirstenbosch every weekend. One day in 1947 we came to cross Newlands Avenue at the Main Road. There was a policeman standing on each side of the street and they said we can’t go over. We asked why not, and they said that the Royal Family was passing. Just the two policeman and my brother and I. We stood there, and the king came past with the queen mother, and Elizabeth and her sister who were in the back, holding onto the railing. There was nobody else in the road – people had big properties, just hedges, so there was nobody who could see into the road. So the royal family could see that it was just us at this corner and the princesses stood up and waved at us! So I came pretty close to the royal family.”

Having spoken Afrikaans as a first language as a child, Mr Thomas was well-aware of the class distinctions imposed upon English & Afrikaans-speaking Coloured people. They were considered lower-class compared with their Coloured neighbours, and in the first weeks after moving to Claremont from the Wynberg/Ottery area (where Youngsfield airfield is now), he discovered that the neighbourhood kids had a new nickname for his brother and himself: “Cannies”. 
“I went to school and a friend of mine, Vernie, asked how the children were at the place we were staying. I said, ‘Well they call us Cannies. Do you know what that is?’ Well Vernie told me what it was: canniballs! The kids called us that because we moved here on a horse cart from far away. Well, we got home that day and my brother and I beat up all the kids who called us Cannies.”

Isaac was the first person on his street to own a motor vehicle: a Willys 1937. 
“The first car I bought I used to park here and work on my cars, do a little bit of hobby-work. My second car was an Austin. 17inch wheels – you could go anywhere with them. They had a crank to start the motor. If your battery is down, you start the crank.”
Today, Mr Thomas’s youngest son, Hilton, is a professional mechanic, running his business from their home in Lansdowne. One of Isaac’s other hobbies is fixing and constructing electronic equipment, something he has been doing for most of his life. 
“During the declaration of war – I had to build my own little radio – then afterward, years later, I built my own radio with the valves, loudspeaker & when this tree was taller I used to send my aerial from the top of the tree to the house.”

Mr Thomas says that, though most of his memories of his life on Heather street were good, he retains one bad memory that has stayed vividly with him: the day they received their eviction notice. On that day, he came home to find his wife crying, showing him the paper wherein they were told that they had to move to Bonteheuwel and leave their family home. 
“I asked what was wrong, and she said, ‘Ike, there were two white chaps here, they came here with a paper, this is our new address – we have to move to Bonteheuwel.’ Well, they didn’t know that we had bought a property in Lansdowne & we were busy building. So I asked her, ‘Why are you crying? We’ve bought a house.’ She said, ‘Ike, you know what one of them said? ‘Ons vil nie julle hot’nots hier in Claremont he nie’ ‘. It’s strange – all the good memories, they just wipe it out with one sentence.”

Isaac Thomas still resides in Lansdowne, the home he built himself, with his youngest son & grandchildren. Sadly his first wife and second wife passed away, and he spends his time in his second home in Wildernis remembering them and the wonderful memories they shared together.